1st Night Flight with the Sky Climber

Hi guys

This is my first post here so I hope you like it. We are all big fans of flite test so having a video and project featured here is awesome. Silly Fokkers is basically a bunch of guys who lost the place they had to fly because of some petty minded members in the old club they belonged to. We dumped the fun police and started to fly foamie at our local parks. For now this is how we roll but hopefully one day we will have our own field and we hope like flite test to encourage new people to try the sport.

ATB Malc 

Silly Fokker RC

In this video the crew from Silly Fokkers take Malc's new night flight project to the local park for a maiden and some testing of his set up. Malc is using the Turnigy 9x for the first time. Bruce @ RC Model Reviews http://www.youtube.com/user/RCModelReviews loves his little 9x radio from Hobbyking so Malc thought he would give one a try. 

Malc's first impression = The Tunrigy 9X is very cheap so one must take that into count when reviewing this radio. The ergonomics are quite nice although it does feel cheap in your hands. The sticks are quite good (although I think I preferred those on my DX6i) and the radio worked flawlessly in this test. Setting up of the radio is not as easy as the Spektrum either! The DX series from Spektrum was intuitive and most people even those new to the sport would find there way around the menu system. The 9x is still relatively easy to set up but HobbyKing have missed out important details like a manual and marking the receiver input terminals so that you know where to put your servo leads.... I was amazed when the radio arrived with nothing in the flimsy box apart from a radio and a receiver + bind plug. No paperwork what so ever to tell you about set up and finding the diagrams for set up online was a nightmare. I think I still prefer my Spektrum and if I am to be honest I will probably be going back to the DX6i. All in all the radio for the money is ok I guess and the additional receivers are very cheap so that has to come in to it when looking at the pros and cons.
Also being maidened in this video were the Turnigy High Density light strips. Malc has wanted to build a Night Flyer ever since getting in to the hobby back in 2009. Dave Herbert inspired Malc to have a go at this with his brilliant channel NightFlyyer http://www.youtube.com/user/NightFlyyer?feature=watch
Malc has been watching Dave since 2008 and his videos have really helped. Dave reviews cool stuff, builds and repairs stuff and has a love for night flying that is (in Malc's case) infectious.
The Nine Eagles Sky Climber has been around on the Silly Fokker channel for a couple of years now and Malc loves it. That said once you have flown it a good while it does get a little boring.... This made it a perfect candidate for building a night flyer. Excited Malc ordered the Turnigy High Density light strips from the UK Hobbyking warehouse and the 4 year dream was about to come true. Malc paid for 48hr delivery and was hoping to have them in time to fly over snow.... Fat chance! Hobbyking took over two weeks to send out the lights the were supposed to be coming from the UK warehouse! I had a terrible time dealing with there customer support and in the end the lights arrived with the "from China via air mail" mark on. That is not the only trouble we have had with HK recently. I do not want to go too much about it here but if you would like to find out more here is the video I made showing you how I was dealt with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fObm7quoVY.

Although the last thing I want to do is send anyone to Hobbyking I can not find a good alternative source to buy these brilliant lights so here is the link to Hobbyking's website where I brought mine http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__14290__High_Density_Waterproof_LED_Flexible_Strip_White_1mtr_.html?strSearch=high%20density all I am going to say is buyer beware!

Malc is going to refine the lighting set up over the next month or so trying to find the design that illuminates the glider best for all round flight. We will be posting a video showing the next step in the evolution of the now renamed Night Climber.